Hi. Has anyone had experience of using psychometric or profiling tools in recruiting contact centre based sales advisors. We currently use competency based interviews and sales role plays as part of an assessment centre to recruit our contact centre sales staff - both inbound and Outbound (Cold Calling) agents are are investigating opportunities to make our selection process more robust in terms of the sales quality of new hires. Thanks

Hi Ray,

Belbin Team Roles have been used to great effect in this context to improve the performance of existing contact centre staff , with a significant subsequent reduction in absenteeism. A paper on this topic was presented at this year's Belbin conference. I'd be happy to supply details.

Dear Ray,

In my experience, good, well-used proprietary personality tests on the market do an excellent job when assessing sales advisors, especially when linked to a motivation questionnaire. One-to-one feedback with the test administrator and interpreter on responses is extremely valuable, and can often cast light on certain issues that cannot be brought out by competency based interviewing. As a result of using these, we have collected masses of normative data, and have referenced high performing and low performing areas along the profile spectrum on both personality and motivational profiles.

Also, don't forget verbal and numerical reasoning tests. Many sales advisors founder sometimes because of their handling and analysis of data, often at speed and under pressure. Simple estimation tests lasting not more than 10 minutes can identify problems before you make a commitment.

Regards,

Pam